The question is, how do we address this?
The answer is simple. Automatics complacency is a well documented problem. Maunufacturers and airline operations departments push the use of full automatics as the safest way to "fly". The reduction in CFIT is hailed as proof positive that automatics are the safest way to fly. And then suddenly Loss of Control becomes the top killer. No shortage of recent accidents to prove that point.
The answer lies in priorities in simulator training. If statistics prove the validity of Loss of Control as the now major cause of serious accidents, then ops departments should remove the blinkers from their eyes and admit that manipulative raw data piloting skills are of equal importance to FMC button pressing skills.
It's fine to run a hour long LOFT on automatic pilot while introducing a series of non-normals scenarios requiring the captain to CRM his crew into a grid-iron football huddle and come up with a committee decision. Some of these scenarios even include the instructor wearing the hats of a tarmac despatch engineer, tug driver, various ATC, company operations radio operator, and CSM. Like Shakespeare he uses his vivid imagination to play the role. The captain and first officer play along with the game and become actors. The simulator becomes stage.
If for perfectly valid operational reasons on revenue flights the automatics are to to fly the aircraft for cost efficiency and safety reasons, and that is for 99 percent of the flight, then surely the priority for recurrent training in the simulator should be on manipulative skill training. And not just the odd hand flown flight director ILS. There is little skill needed for that. The more non-automatics hand flying that can be practiced in the simulator - the perfect training aid after all - the more competent the pilot must become.
Most keen pilots would relish the opportunity to throw away the automatics in the simulator and revisit strong crosswind landings at night, high altitude coffin corner buffet leading to an unusual attitude recovery on instruments, a dead stick landing, black hole circling approaches. Take your choice. At least with currency at manual flying as above, pilots will regain confidence in their own ability to react quickly and correctly to a sudden automatics puzzle that happened prior to the Amsterdam crash.